


Processing

by questionmark007



Category: Stitchers (TV)
Genre: F/M, it starts kinda angsty but ends much happier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4536657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/questionmark007/pseuds/questionmark007
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirsten's thoughts and feelings while Cameron's 'dead' in the finale. She's having a hard time processing everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Processing

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen some other people write things like this and when this idea came to me, I figured I'd give it a shot. I was originally gonna end it before Cameron woke up but I decided that'd just be too mean.

People have never been important to Kirsten. They are, to be blunt, just another obstacle in her way and she had always found it easier to purposefully distance herself from them to avoid dealing with uncomfortable situations, and because she had never really found a person who she could tolerate for an extended period of time. Even Ed, who raised her after her father walked out, she could only be around for so long before it got to be too much.

Or at least that’s how it was until she joined the Stitchers Program.

Joining the program was, quite possibly, one of the best decisions Kirsten had ever made (not that she would tell anyone that, especially now) for two reasons. The first was that after she started stitching, she started feeling, even if only for a short time. She felt what she’d been missing all her life, the upside to human interaction: the connection. First with Peter and Julie, then with Scott and Lily, she began to understand what it meant to love someone, fully and completely as they were. She also discovered what it was to feel pain and loss, two things that now she wished she had never learned. Dealing with loss and pain were so much easier when she was able to instantly process events and put them immediately behind her. 

The second reason was that, for the first time in her entire life, Kirsten found people she connected with, people she didn’t mind being around. Joining Stitchers took her from only being able to handle about (she thinks) ten minutes at a time with her roommate, Camille, to climbing in bed with each other after particularly rough days or to have heart-to-hearts. The program introduced her to Cameron, who seemed to understand her better than anyone else and who only ever wanted to protect her and keep her safe.

Which was exactly the problem.

Because right now, at this moment, Cameron’s lying, dead, on the table of the Corpse Cassette as Ayo tries to revive him.

She’s been screaming at him, trying to get him to wake up, to not be dead. But he just won’t.

He’d been willing to die to try and keep her safe, to prove that he was worthy of her trust. Which hadn’t make sense to Kirsten because didn’t he know that he was the person that she trusted most? He was the first person she went to with everything: someone leaking the Stitcher’s algorithm, turning down Liam’s marriage proposal and him leaving, and the book that she had found in Ed’s safety deposit box, which had resulted in learning some horrifying facts about her past (which Cameron had helped her work through and process). But it had never been enough for him. And now she knew why.

“I’m everywhere,” is what she had said in the stitch and she still couldn’t get her head around it, because how could that be? How could she not know? Have not realized? And the scariest question of all, especially not now that Cameron wasn’t waking up, was what to do with the information. Kirsten was trying her best to simply push the information aside, to deal with when she had more time because for the first time in Kirsten’s life, she was unable to instantly process what was happening.

How was she going to do this without him? 

How could she?

Kirsten wasn’t lying when she had told Maggie that she wouldn’t stay with a new, restaffed program had everyone in the Stitchers Program died from Spanish Flu, but now she knew that it was Cameron holding her to the program more than anything else.

Kirsten wasn’t sure if she reciprocated the feelings that she had discovered in the Stitch because there was too much else going on, too many other important things to worry about. 

Like Cameron being dead.

Like how Kirsten had apparently met Cameron when they were children.

She wanted to ask him about it. She had so much stuff going on in her brain that it was chaos and that terrified her. Almost as much as the thought of losing Cameron terrified her. 

The sound of the heart monitor flatlining was almost enough to push her over the edge as she screamed “Cameron!”

She looked down at his lifeless face, trying to will him back to life.

She just wanted him to wake up and make some stupid comment like ‘trust me now, stretch?’ before telling her about some ridiculous new recipe he wanted to try out. Because while people had never been important to Kirsten, Cameron most certainly was. 

She just wished it hadn’t taken her this long to realize it. 

Ayo yelled “Clear!” and sent another jolt of electricity into Cameron. Kelsey moved forward with the airbag, but just before she got there, Cameron coughed before gasping for air. His eyes flew open and he glanced around at all the terrified, worried faces that surrounded him before meeting her eyes, as she rounded the table to be at his side, rather than at his head.

“So I take it I’m not dead?” he tried to smile, but was still breathing too hard to really manage it, but it was enough for Kirsten. A noise escaped her that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob as she shook her head. 

“No, you’re not dead. Not anymore.” She told him as he sat up. Before she even knew what she was doing, she threw her arms around him and pulled him into a hug. 

“Please don’t ever do anything like that again,” she said as she pulled away, grateful for the fact that she could feel his heartbeat again.

“Like ever again. Those were four and a half of the worst minutes of my life,” Camille said, moving next to Kirsten and leaning forward to give Cameron a hug.

“Noted. But come on! You only hug me after we figure out how to beat a life-threatening situation,” Cameron really did manage a smile this time, looking at Kirsten.

“We will all promise to hug you as much as you want, as long as you never pull another stunt like this,” Linus chimed in, giving Cameron a pat on the back.

“Yeah, I bet we can even get Tim to give you a hug if you want,” Camille gave him a look.

“No,” was Tim’s response from somewhere in the back of the group.

“Your loss. So did it work? Did we get the license plate?” Cameron looked around at all of them expectantly.

“No, we did not,” Maggie cut it, giving Cameron her most serious look. “And while I admire your dedication to this lab and it’s safety, I would appreciate it if you went about showing it in a different way.” Cameron nodded. “That being said, I think you, along with everyone else, have earned the rest of the day off.”

There were some nosies of approval before various lab members and techs scattered to gather their belongings and head home.

Ayo turned to Cameron: “Your vitals and everything looks good but you shouldn’t be alone for the next twenty-four hours, just in case something goes wrong. Is there anyone who will be with you who can keep an eye on you?”

“I will,” Kirsten volunteered before Cameron even had a chance to open his mouth. 

“You’re gonna take care of me?” Cameron asked, looking both bemused and slightly skeptical. 

“No, I’m going to keep an eye on you,” she clarified, ignoring the look she was getting from Camille. “Now get dressed so we can go. I’m starving.”

“Oh! There’s this new pasta recipe I want to try. You eat squash, right?” He asked, pulling his shirt on.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling slightly. Kirsten still had a lot of questions and a lot of emotional processing to do, about Ed Clark, the Stitchers Program and it’s true purpose and now about Cameron. She knew that things would probably start to change drastically fairly soon, but for now, she was just glad that there were some things that never changed.


End file.
